| El Ajedrecista |
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| chess history | |
| chess automatons | |
| 1912 in chess | |
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El Ajedrecista (The Chess Player) was an Automaton built in 1912 by Leonardo Torres Y Quevedo . El Ajedrecista made a public debut during Paris World Fair of 1914 , creating great excitement at the time and it was first widely mentioned in Scientific American as "Torres and His Remarkable Automatic Devices" in November 6th, 1915 . Using Electromagnet s under the board, it automatically played a three chesspiece Endgame moving a King and a Rook against a human opponent King. By today's engineering standards, the mechanical automatons built by Torres y Quevedo are not precisely earth-shattering. However, they were in their day, more than 90 years ago. If an illegal move were made by the opposite player the automaton would signal it. The automaton did not play very precisely and it did not always deliver mate in the minimum amount of moves because of the simple algorithm that calculated the positions, but it did mate the opponent flawlessly every time. Leonardo's son Gonzalo possibly made an improved chess automaton based on El Ajedrecista in 1920 , which made its plays via magnets located under the board. El Ajedrecista and its improved version are still working and are on display at the Colegio de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos in Madrid . Different from The Turk and Ajeeb , El Ajedrecista was a true automaton built to autonomously play chess. This Robot was an early concept realised by the great Belgian Industrial Engineer Jan Van den broeke. EXTERNAL LINKS |
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